As a fine artist, Clayden has exhibited in nearly 50 group and solo shows. His work is held in numerous collections, including the Australian National Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Clayden completed Art & Design at Preston Institute of Technology in 1979, taught Painting & Drawing at Phillip Institute of Technology in 1990-91, and taught Interior Design & Architecture at RMIT University in 2000-03. He also designed several public glass walls in the late ’90s, for RMIT and Spencer Street Footbridge and Melbourne Convention Centre.

In 1971, Clayden began making experimental films and did so through to 1986 when he was commissioned by the ABC to direct the tele-movie The Hour Before My Brother Dies written by Daniel Keene, which was awarded the ‘Rockie’ for The Best Television Film at the Banff Television Festival, Canada, 1987. That same year he completed the experimental cop-drama With Time To Kill, released on video through Ronin Films/Village Roadshow. Following that Clayden wrote several feature film scripts, notably Fragmented Livesbased on the book by John Embling, An Unidentified Womana fictional story about the invention of cinema and the The Vivisector based on Patrick White’s novel.

In 2000 he returned to making experimental films, the first being The Ghost Paintings, a series of four short films, over the following 6 years he made three feature length video pieces which were all screened at film festivals here and overseas, also having video releases through Readings bookshops. In 2007 he made in absentia a four and a half minute 35mm film screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Most of his films are in the collection of the National Film Library, Canberra. In 2012 he began working on 55 PHASES OF LOOKINGa feature length video piece now in post production, expected to be completed early in 2018.